| 1. |
- Ademuyiwa, Adesoji O., et al.
(författare)
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Determinants of morbidity and mortality following emergency abdominal surgery in children in low-income and middle-income countries
- 2016
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Ingår i: BMJ Global Health. - : BMJ Publishing Group Ltd. - 2059-7908. ; 1:4
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Background: Child health is a key priority on the global health agenda, yet the provision of essential and emergency surgery in children is patchy in resource-poor regions. This study was aimed to determine the mortality risk for emergency abdominal paediatric surgery in low-income countries globally.Methods: Multicentre, international, prospective, cohort study. Self-selected surgical units performing emergency abdominal surgery submitted prespecified data for consecutive children aged <16 years during a 2-week period between July and December 2014. The United Nation's Human Development Index (HDI) was used to stratify countries. The main outcome measure was 30-day postoperative mortality, analysed by multilevel logistic regression.Results: This study included 1409 patients from 253 centres in 43 countries; 282 children were under 2 years of age. Among them, 265 (18.8%) were from low-HDI, 450 (31.9%) from middle-HDI and 694 (49.3%) from high-HDI countries. The most common operations performed were appendectomy, small bowel resection, pyloromyotomy and correction of intussusception. After adjustment for patient and hospital risk factors, child mortality at 30 days was significantly higher in low-HDI (adjusted OR 7.14 (95% CI 2.52 to 20.23), p<0.001) and middle-HDI (4.42 (1.44 to 13.56), p=0.009) countries compared with high-HDI countries, translating to 40 excess deaths per 1000 procedures performed.Conclusions: Adjusted mortality in children following emergency abdominal surgery may be as high as 7 times greater in low-HDI and middle-HDI countries compared with high-HDI countries. Effective provision of emergency essential surgery should be a key priority for global child health agendas.
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| 2. |
- Linares, Mathieu, et al.
(författare)
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On the interface dipole at the pentacene-fullerene heterojunction : A theoretical study
- 2010
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Ingår i: The Journal of Physical Chemistry C. - : American Chemical Society (ACS). - 1932-7447 .- 1932-7455. ; 114:7, s. 3215-3224
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The electronic structure at organic/organic interfaces plays a key role, among others, in defining the quantum efficiency of organics-based photovoltaic cells. Here, we perform quantum-chemical and microelectrostatic calculations on molecular aggregates of various sizes and shapes to characterize the interfacial dipole moment at pentacene/C60 heterojunctions. The results show that the interfacial dipole mostly originates in polarization effects due to the asymmetry in the multipolar expansion of the electronic density distribution between the interacting molecules, rather than in a charge transfer from donor to acceptor. The local dipole is found to fluctuate in sign and magnitude over the interface and appears as a sensitive probe of the relative arrangements of the pentacene and C60 molecules (and of the resulting local electrical fields sensed by the molecular units).
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| 3. |
- Persoiu, Aurel, et al.
(författare)
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Holocene winter climate variability in Central and Eastern Europe
- 2017
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Ingår i: Scientific Reports. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 2045-2322. ; 7
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Among abundant reconstructions of Holocene climate in Europe, only a handful has addressed winter conditions, and most of these are restricted in length and/or resolution. Here we present a record of late autumn through early winter air temperature and moisture source changes in East-Central Europe for the Holocene, based on stable isotopic analysis of an ice core recovered from a cave in the Romanian Carpathian Mountains. During the past 10,000 years, reconstructed temperature changes followed insolation, with a minimum in the early Holocene, followed by gradual and continuous increase towards the mid-to-late-Holocene peak (between 4-2 kcal BP), and finally by a decrease after 0.8 kcal BP towards a minimum during the Little Ice Age (AD 1300-1850). Reconstructed early Holocene atmospheric circulation patterns were similar to those characteristics of the negative phase of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), while in the late Holocene they resembled those prevailing in the positive NAO phase. The transition between the two regimes occurred abruptly at around 4.7 kcal BP. Remarkably, the widespread cooling at 8.2 kcal BP is not seen very well as a temperature change, but as a shift in moisture source, suggesting weaker westerlies and increased Mediterranean cyclones penetrating northward at this time.
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| 4. |
- Persoiu, Aurel, et al.
(författare)
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Stable isotope behavior during cave ice formation by water freezing in Scarisoara Ice Cave, Romania
- 2011
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Ingår i: Journal of Geophysical Research. - 0148-0227 .- 2156-2202. ; 116, s. D02111-
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Recently, a series of studies have targeted the stable isotopic composition of cave ice as a possible source of paleoclimatic information, but none presented an explanation for the way in which the external climatic signal is transferred to cave ice. While the relation between the stable isotopic composition of precipitation and drip water can be relatively easily determined, a more complex problem arises, i.e., the possible alteration of the primary climatic signal recorded by the oxygen and hydrogen stable isotopes during the freezing of water to form cave ice. Here we report the results of the first detailed investigations of the oxygen and hydrogen stable isotope behavior during the formation of ice in Scarisoara Ice Cave. Samples of ice align on a straight line with a slope lower than 8 in a delta(18)O-delta(2)H plot, characteristic for ice formed by the freezing of water. A model is presented for the reconstruction of the initial isotopic composition of water, despite the complexity induced by kinetic effects during early stages of freezing. These results are consistent with ice that forms by the downward freezing of a stagnant pool of water, under kinetic conditions in the initial stages of the process, and isotopic equilibrium thereafter. As ice caves are described in many parts of the world, otherwise poorly represented in ice-based paleoclimatology, the results of this study could open a new direction in paleoclimatic research so that an array of significant paleoclimate data can be developed on the basis of their study.
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